


Dementors and Disaster

by pie_is_good



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-31
Updated: 2014-08-31
Packaged: 2018-02-15 14:44:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2232858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pie_is_good/pseuds/pie_is_good
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Dementors invaded Little Whinging, things start to wrong in the muggle world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dementors and Disaster

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Coppercrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coppercrow/gifts).



It was the summer before Harry’s fifth year, and Harry was at the park.

He went to the park most days, just to get out of the house, to be anywhere but there, but usually, he’d eventually have to see Dudley. Not today, though. He suspected with the Dementor attack, Dudley didn’t quite feel up to his usual day of terrorizing the village. Not that Harry minded that Dudley had not come around; Harry generally considered a day without Dudley superior to just about any other day. 

It was most unfortunately time to head home. Harry stood, walking out of the park, and in the first alleyway on his walk home, he found out why Dudley and his friends had not made it to the park that day.

Dudley was slumped against a lamppost, his friends looking nervously down at him in a semicircle. 

“What happened?” Harry said, walking up to the group.

“Get out of here, Potter,” Piers said at him, glaring at Harry for a moment before setting his attention back on his friend. “This isn’t your business.”

“Look,” Harry said. “I don’t like him – or you – very much, but I certainly don’t want anyone dead.”

“Just get out of here.”

Harry complied, and he starting walking away, trying to figure out exactly how he could phone the police without Aunt Petunia noticing. He thought of Mrs. Figg down the road who had turned out to be a Squib and headed directly to her house, but there was no answer at the door.

Shrugging, Harry walked into number 4, and he tried to sneak to one of the phones as quietly as he could.

“Boy!” Uncle Vernon yelled. “What do you think you’re doing?” 

“I need to make a phone call.”

“Who’d want to hear from you?” 

“The police, I suspect,” Harry said, sighing. He knew he wouldn’t be getting out of this that easily. “Your son is lying unconscious in a gutter down the block. I thought I ought to get him some help, seeing his friends are incapable of it.”

“WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM?” Vernon grabbed Harry by the collar of his shirt, but out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Aunt Petunia round the corner.

“My Dudders is hurt? Again?” she said, her voice soft. “Was it the…was it the things?” Harry shook his head as Vernon released him.

“No,” Harry said, rubbing his neck. “At least, I don’t think so. I didn’t see any, and they would have been after me, not him.”

“I’ll phone,” she said, her voice still quiet in the way that only someone who is most decidedly not calm could do. “You and Vernon go to him, see what you can do.”

Vernon glared at Harry, but nodded at his wife. Harry silently led the way down the street. When they got there, it was no longer just Dudley unconscious.

All of his friends had now fallen, as well.

***

It had been four hours at the hospital, which Harry didn’t much want to be there for (“We can’t leave you home by yourself, boy. Who knows what you’ll do after the last couple days?”). The doctors seemed mostly at a loss for what had happened, though Harry gathered from the way they talked that they suspected drugs. That the four boys had taken something together, and it had backfired on them.

Aunt Petunia was the next victim.

She had fallen asleep in the chair beside Dudley’s hospital bed, and neither Vernon nor Harry had seen fit to disturb her. It was not an easy thing, a child in the hospital, and any rest she could get would be good for her.

But she had not woken up, and she was quickly put in the bed next to Dudley. Harry started to hear whispers of quarantines and epidemics, and he decided it was time to slip out, before the doctors had kept him here or Uncle Vernon turned back on him, now that Petunia, too, was unconscious. He left the hospital, heading directly for Mrs. Figg’s. Harry had started to worry that there was something actually wrong here, and he didn’t think that this happening the day after the Dementors had flown through Little Whinging could be much of a coincidence. Mrs. Figg would be his fastest connection to Dumbledore. Hedwig was fast, but she still had to fly there.

When he reached her doorstep, he found there was no answer once again. Out of curiosity, he peered through the front windows, and he saw Mrs. Figg had fallen on the floor of her sitting room. He knew that doing magic again outside of Hogwarts would not be tolerated, and he went around back, breaking the window of the back door to get into the house.

When he reached the sitting room, he found she was still alive, but barely, as far as he could tell. He saw Floo Powder on the mantle above the fireplace, and he tried calling the Burrow. No answer. Harry didn’t really know of any other fireplaces, other than The Leaky Cauldron. He didn’t think that would be much good to him.

He’d have to rely on the slower way. With a last look at Mrs. Figg, he unlocked the front door and walked back to the Dursleys, hurriedly scribbling three notes: Dumbledore, Sirius, and Hermione. One of them would be able to get help. He sent Hedwig off, letting her know to try to find Dumbledore first.

And then he went back to Mrs. Figg’s, and he waited.

He waited far too long. 

He checked on her every ten minutes or so. She seemed to be breathing fine, her heart beating normal, but she just…wasn’t there. 

But Harry was no doctor.

Finally, after many hours had passed, Madame Pomfrey came through the fireplace.

“Where is she?” she asked, not even bothering to greet Harry, and he just pointed to the floor beside him. 

“Mobilicorpus,” she said quickly, motioning for Harry to get off the sofa just before she levitated Mrs. Figg onto it, and then Harry watched as she waved her wand around, muttering to herself. 

“We were afraid of this,” she said finally, turning to Harry and handing him a slip of paper. “I need to get you to Headquarters. The Headmaster will explain everything to you. I presume you know how to Floo?”

Harry nodded, though he was admittedly still a little uncomfortable with it as a method of travel.

“Good. Now memorize the location on the paper, and then I will destroy it. Head to that address, and I will be behind you with Arabella as soon as I can.”

“Number 12, Grimmauld Place!” Harry said, very careful to be more confident in his words than he had been in his second year. 

Harry tumbled out of the fireplace. Hermione and Ron were there to greet him, though he had hardly managed to get a word out before he’d been whisked into the kitchen. Dumbledore, Sirius, Remus, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and a bunch of other people he did not recognize or had only met in passing were gathered around the table.

“Welcome to my house, Harry,” Sirius said, wrapping his arms around Harry. “Awful, isn’t it? Afraid we don’t have time for a tour of the filth right this moment, though. It’ll have to wait.”

Harry looked down at the table and realized he was looking at a map of Little Whinging, and he saw bright blue dots in various locations across the town he’d grown up in.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked. He’d had so many other questions for them. Yesterday, two days ago, they would have been different, but right now, it didn’t seem to matter. Hogwarts was not important right now, nor was the reason that Harry had been kept from everyone all summer. Something else was going on, and Harry had been in enough bad situations to recognize one. It wasn’t good.

“Harry,” Dumbledore said. “As you witnessed yesterday, Dementors are not quite the same around Muggles as they are around wizards. For example, your cousin was unable to see the Dementor, was he not?”

“Yeah,” Harry replied, unsure where the conversation was headed.

“Muggles are not meant to encounter a creature so full of Dark Magic as a Dementor. While wizards have little in the way of defense, Muggles are armed with nothing. It’s not unusual for a Muggle to get sick afterwards, but it’s usually more like a head cold.”

Dumbledore looked to Harry, but Harry just wanted to hear more. It was not the time for questions.

“This time,” Dumbledore continued, “things went a little differently, and we are, quite frankly, not sure why. But Dudley got much more sick than is normal, and it looks like it is spreading, first to his friends, his mother, and to Mrs. Figg, and it doesn’t look like it is stopping.”

Harry looked down at the map, staring at the blue dots, and he blinked. One of the dots had just turned to black.

“Professor, are these dots the people?” Harry said, pointing at the five that he thought must have been Dudley and his friends.

“Yes,” Dumbledore said simply. 

“And sir, if these are people,” Harry swallowed, not really wanting to ask the question he was going to ask next, “why have the colors changed?” Dumbledore’s eyes grew dark, no trace of the twinkle that usually adorned them, though to Harry’s surprise, Sirius stepped in to answer.

“The black ones are the ones who didn’t make it.”

“People are dying?” Harry asked. “What’s happened to my cousin and my aunt? Mrs. Figg?”

“Madame Pomfrey is taking care of Arabella, whose status as a Squib will greatly help her recover, and she sent friends of hers from St. Mungo’s to the hospital to look after your family. They will all be fine, but we do not have the resources to look after everyone. There are too many people, more every minute.”

“What can I do?” Harry asked. “It’s my fault. The Dementors were only there because of me.

“Go be with your friends,” Dumbledore said. “We are doing everything we can to stop this.”

“And Harry,” Remus said, holding his shoulder gently. “This is very much not your fault. It is the fault of whoever sent the Dementors.”

Harry nodded, leaving the kitchen. His friends greeted him, leading him up to their rooms. He explained everything to them, and he was not surprised at all when Hermione retreated into books as soon as she had heard was happening. Hermione was just not the sort of person who let something happen.

Harry was left with Ron and Ginny, but none of them felt much like talking.

Eventually it was time to sleep, and Mrs. Weasley had found Harry a Dreamless Sleep potion. He took it gratefully.

***

The next morning, he woke to Hermione whispering loudly at him.

“Harry, I think I know what we can do,” she said, though she didn’t sound happy. “I think there’s a way to stop this.”

“Yeah?” Harry said, sitting up in his bed. “What is it?”

“It only affects those without magic, right?” Hermione said. 

“Right.” Harry replied.

“Oi, what are you two going on about over there?” Ron said, his voice hoarse from having just woken up in the next bed. Hermione kept going as Ron joined the two of them on Harry’s bed.

“So we need to give everyone a little magic.”

“We can’t just give people magic, Hermione,” Harry said, finding his glasses on the floor next to the nightstand where he must have knocked them in his sleep the night before.

“Yes,” Hermione said. With a deep breath, she held a musty book from the Black library in front of his face. “We can.”

Harry read the pages before him and gasped. He looked over to Ron, who was having a similar reaction.

“Have you told anyone else about this?” Harry asked.

“Not yet. Just you two.”

Without speaking, the three of them nodded, and they headed down the stairs to the kitchen where the adults were all still gathered. It was not ideal, they knew. Far from it.

But something had to be done.

***

“Absolutely not,” Mrs. Weasley said, the first one to speak in the extended silence after Hermione had finished detailing the dark spell she had found. “This is not the way to end this.”

“Really, Molly? How else do you propose we do it?” Sirius said scathingly. “No one else has come up with anything better, and there’s now over twenty thousand cases of this in England! It’s made it to London, so it won’t be long before it will be the world!”

“Twenty thousand?” Harry looked down at the map, now extended to show a much larger area than it had the last night. While he had been asleep, it looked as if this disease had spread. Quickly.

“I volunteer,” Remus said. They all turned to him, stunned, but he just shrugged. “I don’t have a family. I’m not important. Best choice.”

He swallowed, shaking his head as if he couldn’t quite believe he’d said those words out loud, but he stood his ground. The rest of them didn’t not know what to say, but Hermione quickly shook her head.

“It couldn’t be you,” Hermione said, pointing down at the book. “It has to be a human. I don’t think a werewolf would count.”  
“She’s right,” Dumbledore said. He had been silent the entire time, carefully studying the words in the book Hermione had brought over and over again. “It will be me.”

Dumbledore turned so quickly to leave the kitchen that his robes billowed around him. He did not leave time for anyone to argue.

Everyone sat quietly in the kitchen. An hour passed, and blue dots were still appearing more and more rapidly. They weren’t sure if Professor Dumbledore had succeeded or not. Mrs. Weasley prepared a meal, though no one really ate. Hermione and Remus continued to pour through every book in the house, desperate to find another answer.

“Look,” Ron said, the first word anyone had said in half an hour. He pointed at the map in front of him. “It’s over.”

***

Three days later, no one had heard from Dumbledore, but every muggle had been cured and no new cases were to be found.

Everyone at the Order assumed that Dumbledore had succeeded.

That afternoon, Harry received a large package by owl. He recognized the script on the front from the note he had received with his Invisibility Cloak his first year, and he knew immediately who had sent it.

_Dear Harry,_

_If this package has made it to you, it means that I have succeeded. Please let Ms. Granger know that we are all in her debt for such an ingenious solution. I believe that the world is now immune to such a disaster again, so if this was indeed Lord Voldemort’s doing, as I suspect it was, we will not have to worry about another attempt._

_Enclosed is my Pensieve. I believe that you are familiar with it after last school year. I regret not being able to teach you all that I know in person, but know that had there been a way, I would have been with you for as long as I could._

_Review all the memories I have given you, Harry. Everything I know about Lord Voldemort is within. Do not share this with anyone, though you may tell your friends Ron and Hermione whatever you wish, as I expect you would do anyway. I hope that this will explain the things that I have yet to explain, and answer all the questions that I know you must have._

_Good luck, Harry._

_Sincerely,  
Professor Dumbledore  
_

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I had to fudge a bit of Order of the Phoenix to get this to fit, so I hope you didn't mind. :)


End file.
